New Materialist ways of thinking accordingly challenge traditional dis-
tinctions between human and non-human, as well as classical hierarchies
that describe a descending scale from God, through human, animal, and
vegetal, to minerals and the inorganic. Instead a singular yet variegated
upsurge of materialization is countenanced.
—DIANA COOLE, “FROM WITHIN THE MIDST OF THINGS: NEW SENSIBILITY,
NEW ALCHEMY, AND THE RENEWAL OF CRITICAL THEORY”Aesthetic experience is nothing that can be “ had” by the subject. The term
“experience” refers to a process between subject and object that trans-
forms both—the object insofar as it is only in and through the dynamic of
its experience that it is brought to life as a work of art, and the subject in-
sofar as it takes on a self-reflective form, its own performativity.
—JULIANE REBENTISCH, “ANSWERS TO QUESTIONNAIRE ON THE CONTEMPORARY”CRISIS OF THE OBJECTThe idea came during a conversation at a Parisian café in 1936. Dora Maar
and Pablo Picasso were having tea with Meret Oppenheim when the fur-
covered bracelet she wore attracted her friends’ attention. Reportedly,
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FOLLOWING MATERIALITYFrom Medium to Surface—Medium Specificity
and Animal Visibility in the Modern Age